Police brutality is a problem in our country today. There are many instances where the police have gone too far in dealing with criminals. There are many things that people are doing to stop police brutality. More and more bad cops are being caught in their wrong doings. There are many cases that go unseen.
The police are good at keeping things quiet. They have a code of honor that says that police do not tell on each other. The Johnny Gammage case was a recent case in the news. One of the only reasons that this case made the news is because Gammage is the cousin of Pittsburgh Steeler Ray Seals. The outcome of this case angered many people. On October twelfth, 1995, Johnny Gammage the 31-year-old black male was pulled over.
Gammage committed no crime. After an altercation with the police he was brutally beaten. Over the course of seven minutes he was beaten and suffocated by five police officers. An autopsy showed that Gammage was suffocated by pressure applied to his neck and chest when the officers were trying to restrain him. On November third, 1995 a six-member coroner’s jury recommended that criminal homicide charges be filed against the police officers.
District Attorney Bob Colville said that he would only charge three out of the five officers involved in the beating. He charged Lt. Milton Mulholland and Patrolman John Vojtas with 3rd degree murder, official oppression, and involuntary manslaughter. He charged Patrolman Michael G.
Albert with involuntary manslaughter. Allegheny county judge James R. McGregor ordered the three officers to stand trial for the misdemeanor charge of involuntary manslaughter. This is the lowest form of homicide.
He dropped the third-degree murder and official oppression charges against Mulholland and Vojtas. During the trial a witness said that he witnessed a fight that lead to Gammage’s death. He contradicted the story told by the police and said that the officers started the fight.
The judge ruled a mistrial saying that coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht “tainted the jury” when he said to the defense attorney “Its not for me to tell you what your client did. It is for the client to tell me, the ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what he did. ” (Fact Sheet on the Murder of Johnny Gammage). Finally, after the re-trial, the officers were acquitted. Judge Cashman ruled that the death was an accident.
This is proof that police can get away with murder. You can not suffocate somebody to death by accident. When the officer was restraining Gammage, he knew that he was using too strong of a force. On June 13, 1996, in Brooklyn, two white plains clothes officers killed Aswan Keshawn Watson, a 21-year old black male. They fired 18 bullets into him.
Watson was not armed. A jury acquitted the officers though. The jury said that they were justified in believing themselves to be in danger. The officers said that they mistook Watson’s car steering wheel lock for a gun.
The policemen sure did not have to shoot him 18 times. Two or three times would have been sufficient. Baseball hall of fame Joe Morgan won a $540,000 lawsuit against the Los Angles police department. A city policeman accused him of being a drug courier. Morgan was grabbed by the neck and thrown to the floor and handcuffed. Actor Blair Underwood was stopped by the Los Angles police for no reason.
When Underwood copped an attitude when the officer asked for his license. So the cop pointed a gun to his head. The policeman said, “If you’re a young black male who drives a nice car, you’re automatically a target for the cops because it’s assumed you must be doing drugs,” (Detroit News p. 1B). Another incident that shows that police think that they can get away with anything is the Abner Louima case.
Abner Louima is a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant, who was arrested. At the police station, he was brutally assaulted. The police, our protectors, sodimized Mr. Louima with a toilet plunger. They then shoved the plunger in his mouth, breaking his teeth.
Louima was hospitalized and released in critical condition. One of the officers that assaulted him said .
